College of Mediahttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/16323
Tue, 20 Mar 2018 02:28:18 GMT2018-03-20T02:28:18ZThe effectiveness of corporate social responsibility in corporate crises: from the perspective of assimilation – contrast effects and attribution theoryhttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/99105
The effectiveness of corporate social responsibility in corporate crises: from the perspective of assimilation – contrast effects and attribution theory
Nyarko, Akua Yeboaa
The positive impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities on stakeholder reactions is widely discussed. However, minimal research has addressed how CSR plays diverse roles in insulating a company from negative impacts of corporate crises, depending on the type of crises. This study specifically took into consideration consumers’ awareness of a company’s CSR reputation and their interpretation of CSR motives. To help fill this gap, assimilation - contrast effects and attribution theory were applied to an experimental study exploring a 2 (crisis type: product harm vs. moral harm) x 2 (CSR reputation: high vs. low) x 2 (CSR motives: intrinsic vs. extrinsic) between-subjects design. Two interaction effects were observed between crisis type and CSR reputation and crisis type and consumer inferences of CSR motives on CSR skepticism, resilience to negative information, attitudes towards the corporation and purchase intention of the corporate products. The results indicated that consumers’ awareness of a company’s CSR reputation and their inferences of company motives from a CSR-based crisis played significant roles in determining the valence of reactions within different crisis type. In addition, resilience predicted the impact of crisis type and CSR on attitudes and purchase intentions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Crisis; Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
Tue, 18 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/991052017-07-18T00:00:00ZNyarko, Akua YeboaaHow different types of anticipated regret advertising messages interact with mood to influence purchase intentionhttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/99099
How different types of anticipated regret advertising messages interact with mood to influence purchase intention
Wang, Mia
Thoughts about potential negative consequences of a certain action can influence people’s choice. To avoid feeling regretful, consumers generally change their original decision or attitude to ensure that a future outcome is congruent with their expectation. The effect of anticipated regret has been applied in health and safety domains for years. However, only a few studies that had applied the concept of anticipated regret in advertisements for general products. Combined with past findings that individuals’ affective states have a strong impact on their information processing strategies, the current study examines how different types of anticipated regret advertising messages (verbally framed vs. graphically framed) interact with consumer’s mood (positive vs. negative) to influence their attitudes and behavior toward the advertised product. The results revealed a significant main effect of message types. People tended to have better ad evaluation when the ad used graphically framed AR message compared with verbally framed AR message. However, there was no significant interaction between mood and AR message types on participants’ purchase intention. Implications and future research will be discussed.
Anticipated regret; Mood
Mon, 17 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/990992017-07-17T00:00:00ZWang, MiaMobile phone in your personal bubble: the effect of physical environment and personalized information on mobile advertisinghttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/98141
Mobile phone in your personal bubble: the effect of physical environment and personalized information on mobile advertising
Xiao, Bei
With the emergence of mobile technology, mobile phones have been increasingly adopted as a medium in the marketing realm. Users have developed deep relationships with their mobile phones as mobile phones are physically and psychologically attached to their owners. However, there is information transit between mobile phones and the outside world which may threaten the user’s privacy. This study explores how physical environment (private space vs public space) and personalization influence the effectiveness of push mobile advertising messages. The findings show the main effect physical environment and personalization have on people’s perceptions about messages as intrusions, as well as their attitudes towards mobile advertising. Besides, the relationship between personalization and outcomes is moderated by the physical environment; when people are in private spaces where they have a higher expectation of privacy, they are concerned when they receive push mobile advertising messages that contain their personal information, and this results in a negative attitude towards mobile advertising. Implications and future research will be discussed.
Mobile devices; Mobile advertising; Personalization; Personal space
Mon, 03 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/981412017-07-03T00:00:00ZXiao, BeiBuzz by Bravo: a trendsetting niche network’s place within contemporary televisionhttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/97754
Buzz by Bravo: a trendsetting niche network’s place within contemporary television
Baldwin, Martina S
This dissertation examines Bravo as a niche cable channel whose strategies, audience, and programming contribute to its success in a competitive, changing landscape. As such my study of Bravo significantly contributes to the understanding of what television—as both a concept and an industry—represents in the twenty-first century. This project unpacks Bravo’s network strategies and explores how postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies are presented through the channel’s most successful franchise, The Real Housewives. I focus on the cable network Bravo as an exemplar in the ‘digital era’ of contemporary television, reflective of both trends in popular reality programming as well as the increasingly inevitable integration between television and technology.
The project illuminates the trends indicative of the current state of the television industry. In a moment where streaming, on-demand services are taking viewers’ attention away from their traditional cable subscriptions and fictional original programming is at an all-time competitive high, Bravo’s success is notable. Almost fully reliant upon unscripted, reality fare, the channel continues to find success when many critics predict the end of reality programming and traditional cable. From an academic perspective, this dissertation is unique in that it combines television, industry, network, and audience studies with thematic analyses to reinforce the impossibility of studying television in our contemporary moment without each of these components. This project straddles the boundaries of several paradigms. Informed by critical branding and television studies, it also owes a significant debt to critical cultural studies and its interventions into the understanding of popular culture, power, and media.
Television studies; Network studies; Postfeminism; Cable television; Neoliberalism; Industry studies; Digital era; Critical branding studies
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/977542017-04-21T00:00:00ZBaldwin, Martina SVisuals, inferences, and consumers' biased information seekinghttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/97728
Visuals, inferences, and consumers' biased information seeking
Ryu, Sann Hee
The purpose of this research is to investigate how varying product visuals affect consumers’ selective exposure, and whether inferences and attitudes toward a newly encountered brand can mediate such visual biasing effects. I examine an underexplored dimension of confirmation bias in which newly developed inferential beliefs and brand attitudes are induced only by visual cues. The levels of product visual appeals are manipulated in a 2 x 2 factorial design experiment, varying package design (good vs. plain design) and image quality (high vs. low resolution). In Study 1, I demonstrate the effects of product visuals on inferential beliefs, brand attitudes, and purchase intentions. I explore how consumers use product visual appeals to infer a product’s functional value and the credibility of a seller, and form attitudes toward the newly encountered brand, as well as purchase intentions. In Study 2, I examine how varying product visual appearance affects consumers’ inclination to select congenial information in customer reviews, and whether consumers’ inferential beliefs and brand attitudes mediate such effects. In Study 3, I test consumers’ cognitive responses as another mediator between product visuals and brand attitudes, and the moderating role of need for cognition between brand attitudes and selective exposure. In Study 4, I use a different set of visual stimuli and use different measures of the same critical constructs, and replicate the visual biasing effects. I found significant main effects of package design and image quality on consumer judgments (perceived product quality, seller credibility, brand attitudes, purchase intentions, and thought positivity) and information search (selective exposure). The results also confirm an increasing linear trend in belief positivity, attitude favorability, and selective exposure as the product visuals become richer. I present an explanatory framework for the visual biasing effects using structural equation modeling: consumers view the visual appearance of a product (varying in package design and image quality), generate inferential beliefs (about perceived product quality and seller credibility), form attitudes toward the brand, and choose to read customer reviews in favor of their newly developed preferences. This is the first demonstration of confirmation biases resulting from a one-time exposure to a never-before encountered brand in which consumer inferences and judgments are induced only by product visual appeals. Theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions to the field of consumer research are discussed for future research.
Visual biasing effects; Inferential beliefs; Brand attitudes; Confirmation bias; Selective exposure
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/977282017-04-21T00:00:00ZRyu, Sann HeeSpanish transitions: representation of transgender characters in Spanish filmhttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/97596
Spanish transitions: representation of transgender characters in Spanish film
Roig Mora, Arnau
This dissertation examines the different representations of transgender characters in Spanish cinema since their appearance in the 1970s up until today. The history of Spain in the last forty years, with its radical political changes, yields extremely fertile transgender case studies, especially in Spanish films, which become sites of struggle and negotiation of meaning, definition and understanding of gender, sex and sexuality. The cases in which transgender characters have been protagonists of Spanish movies –and thus explored and portrayed in more depth- give us first-hand information on the different ways of thinking about gender, and the different ways of thinking and picturing a topic that was previously hidden from the public arena. Furthermore, the systems of codes and analogies that a culture uses and reproduces in its media are a perfect site to further investigate the sets of beliefs that a society holds true or privileges over others as defining traits.
In order to do such investigation, this dissertation develops three archetypes of representation that classify and make sense of all the movies and their representations, highlighting the recurring tropes, narrative tools or privileged ideological discourses embedded in them. By organizing the titles in archetypes, but also paying attention to their temporality and social changes around transgender issues, this dissertation investigates the codification and representation of transgenderism in Spanish film as a site for discursive formation of the transgender identity, but also as a space of social struggle for the meaning of sex, gender and sexuality.
The two first archetypes (the Criminal and the Patient) correspond to representations with a heavy reliance on the legal or medical situation of the character respectively, whereas the third one (the Empowered) lets us see how representation can transcend medical and legal definitions and give autonomy and a voice to the character that the previous two somehow negate. Furthermore, the three of them overlap in some of the movies, negating the possibility of fixed and monolithic categories, and highlighting the limits of these archetypes, which are used as a tool to understand the different discourses rather than classify and label each of the characters.
This dissertation, then, explores the different representations or archetypes that are used to portray transgender people through the case studies found in contemporary Spanish cinema, with the goal of unpacking the continuities and ruptures of sex and gender politics in the last 40 years of political change in Spain.
Film; Spain; Transgender; Transsexual; Queer; Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT); Cultural studies; Foucault; Gender; Sex; Censorship
Wed, 19 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/975962017-04-19T00:00:00ZRoig Mora, ArnauAcross the Great (Fire) Wall: China and the global Internethttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/97589
Across the Great (Fire) Wall: China and the global Internet
Shen, Hong
This dissertation examines the multifaceted interactions between China and the global Internet in the past three decades, especially China’s outward cyber expansion, or the “going out” program that has gained momentum since the mid-2000s, and explores the changing social class relations that accompany and shape this evolution. It offers a political economic analysis of how units of Internet capital and state agencies in China are impinging on the international Internet system. It also investigates both the structure and agency of Chinese Internet capital by examining the rise of an Internet capitalist class fraction in China and its intricate relationships with both the state and other transnational capitalists.
Based on intensive research into both primary and secondary data sources, this dissertation shows that instead of being confined to a repressive inward-looking national “intranet,” China in fact has actively engaged with the political economy of the global Internet since the 1980s – and is now increasingly projecting power outward in this sphere. Conceptualizing the Chinese Internet industry as an expansive sector that encompasses hardware and equipment vendors, network operators, web services and applications providers, as well as major government and corporate network users, this dissertation unpacks the complex and dynamic state-capital interactions that characterize these different industrial subsectors. It argues that, although the state has retained some critical maneuvering room over its internet capital in the construction of an International Internet “with Chinese characteristics,” the complex and often contradictory interplay between the territorial logic of the state and the expansive logic of capitalist accumulation, and between the structure and agency of Chinese Internet capital, continue to create tensions and conflicts.
China; Internet industry; Internet policy; Global Internet governance; Political economy; Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI); Internationalization; "Going out"
Wed, 19 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/975892017-04-19T00:00:00ZShen, HongImagine this: a test of imagination, message framing and reference-level on attitude, self-efficacy and intention to perform exercisehttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/97434
Imagine this: a test of imagination, message framing and reference-level on attitude, self-efficacy and intention to perform exercise
Shancer, Matthew Paul
Public service announcements and health promotion ads frequently ask viewers to imagine the consequences that may occur if the viewer does not engage in the recommended health behavior (e.g., regular exercise, quitting smoking). Sometimes these messages are designed to emphasize negative outcomes associated with inaction (i.e., loss-framed messages), while other messages emphasize positive outcomes associated with behavior change (i.e., gain-framed messages). Message designers also choose whether to create messages that refer directly to the audience (i.e., uses second person) or that refer to other people in general (i.e., uses third person). Understanding how the combination of imagination, potential future losses or gains, and direct or indirect references to the viewer influence how viewers respond to these messages has important theoretical and practical implications about their effectiveness.
This thesis presents the results of a 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects experiment that tested the effect of imagination (imagination, non-imagination), message framing (gain, loss) and reference-level (self, other) on outcomes of interest to health communication practitioners (e.g., attitude, self-efficacy, behavioral intention). Participants (N = 275) read a message about the importance of regular exercise and physical activity. Imagination was operationalized by telling participants to imagine themselves in the future experiencing the benefits or consequences of exercising or not exercising regularly. Message framing was operationalized using gain-framed messages that emphasized potential benefits of exercise (e.g., living longer, avoiding heart disease) or loss-framed messages that emphasized potential consequences of inactivity (e.g., dying prematurely, suffering from heart disease). Reference-level was manipulated by using second-person pronouns (e.g., you, your) that referred directly to the participant or third-person pronouns (e.g., they, their) that referred to people in general.
Results of inferential statistical analyses revealed that when participants were asked to imagine the future, loss-framed other-referencing messages and gain-frame self-referencing messages produced significantly more favorable attitudes, and higher ratings of perceived behavioral control and self-efficacy. When participants were not asked to imagine the future, self-referencing messages produced more favorable attitudes, and higher ratings of perceived behavioral control than other-referencing messages regardless of message frame. One important implication of the findings is that when health communication practitioners attempt to strengthen messages by asking viewers to imagine themselves experiencing future outcomes, they might unintentionally cause viewers to have lower evaluations of key variables associated with performing health behaviors. Additional theoretical and practical implications, study limitations, and future research avenues are discussed.
Imagination; Message framing; Self-referencing; Self-efficacy; Physical activity; Advertising; Health; Theory of planned behavior
Tue, 25 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/974342017-04-25T00:00:00ZShancer, Matthew PaulBlack women, HIV/AIDS, and the media: communicating an epidemic in the hip hop erahttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/95629
Black women, HIV/AIDS, and the media: communicating an epidemic in the hip hop era
Randolph, Carolyn A
This study examines the mediated representation of HIV/AIDS and blackness. Using black feminist thought, and its organizing principles— intersectionality and the matrix of domination—this analysis investigates how race, gender, class, and disease work in concert to inform media texts by and about black women living with the virus. Furthermore, this examination employs a textual analysis of the AIDS storyline on the black situation comedy Girlfriends, the AIDS character Ana Wallace in the HBO film Life Support, and the self-representation of Rae Lewis-Thornton on her personal health blog "Diva living with AIDS." Each text generates alternative representations of HIV-positive black women that contest familiar stereotypes and clichés. Overall, this study helps scholars better understand the various meanings and definitions surrounding black women in the contemporary AIDS epidemic.
HIV/AIDS; Black women; Media; Popular culture
Fri, 15 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/956292016-07-15T00:00:00ZRandolph, Carolyn ARemediating empire: constituting, documenting and re-mediating U.S. citizenship in Puerto Rico (1898-1941)http://hdl.handle.net/2142/88294
Remediating empire: constituting, documenting and re-mediating U.S. citizenship in Puerto Rico (1898-1941)
Curbelo, Katia
This dissertation proposes an archeology of American representations of U.S. citizenship remediated as governmental technology through three forms of media for the U.S. colonial possessions acquired in 1898. More precisely, through critical discourse analysis this research looks at interplays of U.S. government produced documentary media, and cultural representations of U.S. citizenship as governmental technology of empire in the specific case of Puerto Rico through three periods of development encompassing1898-1941. My work looks at how these representations of citizenship have been possible through three periods, and even promoted by the State’s emissaries in Puerto Rico, specifically how Americans sought to remediate through images and texts a narrative of the Puerto Rican space and its subjects. Through this study the constitution, documentation and remediation of the Puerto Rican people as well as the island of Puerto Rico from the United States’ point of view has been critically analyzed, generating a space where the past can be used to examine the present time in the island. This is achieved by reviewing three periods of media development and imperial discourse remediation, the latter seen as reconciliation of imperial discourse through each period, at the same time this discourse was re-launched through newer media).
The unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico gained that status in 1900 (Foraker Act), and in 1917 through the Jones Act, U.S. citizenship was granted to the population of the territory. This research analyzes how the United States represented U.S. citizens from Puerto Rico to certain U.S. audiences. The sources chosen provide a material documentary trail that in each period evidences how U.S. citizenship was morphed by Congress to organize an overseas space away from the U.S. continental space, where U.S. values and morals were reproduced by government agents through Americanization policies for the subjects, while documented in these media. These cultural technologies became types of catalogs physically displaying the possibilities of prosperity waiting to happen in lands needing to be labored, exploited, and used for the Manifest Destiny of the American People.
The first part of my work introduces the historical background assessed and provides in Chapter I keywords that have become the toolbox for this research. The second part (Ch II: Constituting Empire, and Ch III: Documenting Empire) provides a historical look at how imperial power and colonial governance were developed for the islands acquired during the U.S. expansion overseas after 1898, and how imperial power and colonial subjects depended on each other for parallel development of their identities. Ch IV: Remediating Empire closes the last part of my work, evidencing the change in language of imperial policies establishing the governmentality the U.S. had over Puerto Rico, through emissaries of Empire such as the U.S.D.A. and locally developed structures in the island, marked by the years after the New Deal (1930s).
The methodology adopted for this research follows a Foucaultian approach to discourse analysis and evaluation. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as explained by Gillian Rose in Visual Methodologies (2012) in its two approaches, was used. As will be seen the particular CDA (I or II) applied for the media in each chapter depended on who and what was approaching the discourse of empire. In Ch II the approach was CDA I as it evaluated political cartoons printed in newspapers of the first reviewed period (popular media). Ch III used CDA I as well, to evaluate the medium of documentary photography, which in itself represents a period of new media advancement coupled with scientific fact, text, and illustrations were reviewed for the discourse of empire for the newly acquired insular possessions. Ch IV used CDA I and II to work with visual and written texts from the chosen album, and moving onto the voice over of the film. However, it is a critical analysis of the ways the emissaries of the imperial power and its discourse approached the subject through a display (as in museum or gallery catalog) in two different media of the constructed subjects (U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico). Data for this dissertation was collected from research done on-site at the Archivo Nacional de Puerto Rico, various libraries (PR and US), as well as through on-line archives, libraries, and informal interviews in Puerto Rico. This project is relevant as it mends a gap in the historical discourse of visual imagery made about Puerto Rico from the side of the U.S.A., permitting a periodization over the constitution, documentation, and (re)formulations of the island’s representation through official politico-cultural discourse of U.S. citizenship as a governmental technology, and its remediation through progressive developments of media.
U.S. citizenship; Puerto Rico-U.S. relations; colonial governmentality & empire; remediation; United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); photography & motion pictures; documentary, archive & archeology
Fri, 17 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/882942015-07-17T00:00:00ZCurbelo, Katia